


If I salute the magpie, knock on wood, will I be doing any good?

by shopfront



Category: Picnic at Hanging Rock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, Magic, Mistrust, shifting loyalties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26220991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: There is more lurking in the darkness of Appleyard College than even Dianne de Poitiers supposes.
Relationships: Hester Appleyard/Dianne de Poitiers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: Fandom Giftbox 2020





	If I salute the magpie, knock on wood, will I be doing any good?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> No on-screen character death (permanent or otherwise), implied potential death of a minor male character.
> 
> _But we bent, and we broke, and I meant what I spoke,  
>  And the blame game does not produce a winner.  
> We went as far as we could go, we had to go that far to know  
> That we had nowhere left to aim  
> And no one left to blame  
> But the moon's wax and wane and the turn of the tide._  
> \-- Wax and Wane by Alana Henderson (credit: title is also from the same song)

Dianne fretted as she walked towards the house, worried that the jingle of the bicycle chain rolling beside her might wake someone. She saw a glimmer of light in the upper windows as she approached that brought her almost to a stop, but only for a moment; when nothing else moved, she breathed a little easier and continued her quiet approach. It was imperative that she sneak in without Hester noticing her - though quite how Dianne was going to pull it off, she still wasn’t sure.

She peered up more closely at the light as she drew closer and, despite it feeling to her as though the single flame shone through the night like a beacon, there was only one candle lit in the windows above. But she had relaxed too soon - almost as soon as she stopped beneath it, the wind blew harder and a draught bent the flame. Its light shifted, spilling across Hester Appleyard’s stark cheekbones and throwing her into sharp relief, startling Dianne.

Her face seemed eery in the half-light of a moon mostly obscured by drifting clouds and a creeping fog that was beginning to enclose the house in a night-time blanket, but her attention was clearly fixed on Dianne below. Already slick with dew from the fog, Mr. Montpelier’s borrowed bicycle slipped from Dianne’s horror-numbed fingers as she stared back.

In the end, it was the bicycle falling that saved her.

It clattered beside her feet as it hit the pebbles of the drive. Immediately the clatter was followed an angry hiss and the sound of something leaping back and out of the way.

Dianne shrieked and the small light shining down from the window disappeared altogether, leaving her with only the moon’s fickle brightness to guide her. Blinking hard but unable to see clearly through the edges of the fog, she reached out. Past the tips of her fingers, in the darkness, something moved, but still she reached for the small, familiar shape that she half-thought she might have seen.

Her heartbeat was thumping in her throat as that something moved again. “Sara?” she whispered, as whomever - or whatever - it was crept forward on softly padded feet. “Sara, is that you?”

But before she was answered, the door of the college swung open with a bang as loud as a thunderclap. Candlelight spilled out, jealously guarded from the night air by the shelter of Hester’s cupped hand.

“Get away!” she yelled as she rushed towards Dianne. She reached out, leaving the flame unguarded, and almost immediately it flickered out.

“No, wait,” Dianne started to protest, though she sounded unconvincing even to herself. “I think it might be-“

Something laughed in the darkness behind her, small and high.

Even in nothing but struggling moonlight, the terror on Hester’s face was clear to see. Grasping around in the dark for Hester’s offered hand, Dianne let herself be dragged inside. She looked back as they ran, still searching - always searching. An unheard scream built in her throat, but there was nothing to see except for the lonely bicycle, wheel still spinning, as the mist crept forward to shroud it in the dark.

Dianne grappled with Hester as she slammed the door shut behind them and dragged Dianne deeper into the foyer. Her fingers clawed at Hester’s forearm to try and free herself from the hand still fixed tight as iron around Dianne’s, but Hester’s grip was too fierce. Dianne had never realised how much strength was hidden behind Hester’s ornate widows gowns, for there would be no hope of breaking free from such a grip unless she was released willingly.

“What was that?” she demanded, but Hester ignored her. “Answer me! _What was_ -“

“Mrs. Appleyard?”

The voice came from above them. Dora was at the top of the stairs and out of sight but her voice, though bleary with sleep, was clearly recognisable.

“Not a word,” Hester said quietly. When Dianne opened her mouth to argue, Hester pressed a finger against Dianne’s lips. Her eyes seemed to bore into Dianne’s very soul as she leant in close, her grip on Dianne still wickedly tight. “Not. A. Word.”

“Mademoiselle de Poitiers?” Dora called, sounding more awake with each word. “Headmistress? Who’s down there?”

Dianne nodded reluctantly to Hester.

“It’s just us, Dora. We had a little trouble with the front door but all is well, you should go back to sleep,” Hester called back, her eyes never leaving Dianne’s and her finger still on her lips. She didn’t pull away even when Dora’s footsteps slowly began to recede. “To bed with you as well, we don’t want to risk waking the girls.”

“I am not going anywhere until you explain- until you tell me what that was,” Dianne hissed.

But Hester remained implacable. “Don’t open the door,” was all she would say as she followed Dora up to bed, leaving Dianne to stare at the closed door and wonder if she was capable of the bravery needed to open it alone.

*

It took a long time for Dianne to follow Dora and Hester to bed. Even by the time she did, the halls were still not empty and she caught a glimpse of candlelight on blonde hair as Hester disappeared around a corner ahead of her. Thereafter, throughout the night, Dianne continued to hear the familiar clacking of Hester’s heels as she prowled the halls.

Once or twice she roused from her bed and shrugged on a shawl, half intent on returning to the drive and letting whatever madness had descended upon them all take her. She lit candles from the dying embers of the fire and placed them on every available surface. Or she haunted the windows as Hester had been when Dianne returned, though whenever she looked out there was never anything to be found on the lawn below.

For each excursion she made back into darkness of the house, somehow it was always Hester’s quiet footsteps that drove her out of the halls and back to the relative warmth and comfort of her bed.

By the time dawn finally broke, Dianne felt wan and listless from lack of sleep. But the clatter of shoes and rising voices from the other end of the house drew her from her rest. Today she was meant to help the girls pack, as she always did on their departure day before each holiday.

Almost as if in a dream, Dianne reached for the same wrinkled dress she had worn the day before without thinking. Her hair fell down when she tried to pin it up, and her cheeks barely pinked when she tried to pinch some life back into them. But somehow, despite her distraction, one by one each girl was packed and awaiting their carriage in the drive.

Edith was the last to go, as always. When she asked about the dusty, worn dress, Dianne laughed, but the sound sat heavy in her breast and throat. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hester passing by the door as they danced - and pausing, to listen.

“A lady does not remark on a gentleman’s outfit, Edith,” she said with a chuckle that she didn’t particularly feel, her heartbeat beginning to thrum loudly in her ears.

Outside the door, Hester raised an eyebrow and dipped her head gracefully in acknowledgement of Dianne’s attention before sweeping away. For just a second it felt like Dianne’s too-fast beating heart was being ripped from her chest to depart with her, until Esther asked another ridiculous question and brought her attention back to the dance.

Dianne didn’t see Hester again until after she’d put Esther in her very late carriage and sent her away with as much affection and warmth as she could muster. It was Dora who drew Dianne towards them, her voice too piercing to ignore.

“It’s because of her, isn’t it?” she was ranting. “I saw her this morning and I heard you let her in so very late last night. It’s not right, her coming and going at all hours. What would people say if they knew? It’s not right!”

“All the more reason for you to leave early,” Hester replied. There was a thump and a scandalised gasp, and when Dianne peered inside the doors she found Hester at the base of the stairs with Dora’s trunk at her feet. She was dusting off her hands with a careless air, as if she’d brought the trunk down the stairs by herself despite its obvious weight and had no time for Dora’s hysterics. Behind her, Dora was growing more red by the second, like a kettle getting ready to whistle over a hot fire. “Ah, Dianne. Is Esther away, finally?”

Dianne nodded slowly as she stepped cautiously over the threshold.

“She’s a harlot,” Dora cried. “We all know what she’s-“

“That is _enough_ , Dora,” Hester interrupted, her voice steely and cold.

Dora deflated immediately.

“We will have dinner at the usual time. The small dining room this time, I think,” Hester said shortly afterward as they watched Dora struggle away down the drive with her trunk, which was apparently exactly as heavy as it looked. Then she swept away, leaving Dianne alone to watch the last of their household disappear past the gates.

*

“You may leave in the morning,” Hester said over dinner, after a lengthy explanation of where the servants and other teachers had gone.

It was the last straw, after a long, tasteless meal which had only reminded Dianne of how ill she felt from the lack of sleep. She had had enough, having spent the afternoon wandering the empty halls as she turned the previous night over and over in her tired mind. Now she crumpled her napkin and threw it down on the table. “No, I shall leave now,” she declared as she pushed back her chair.

That at least made Hester go still again, and wiped the smirk from her face. “No,” she said, her grip on her wineglass tightening. “You may leave _in the morning_.”

On the edge of her seat, Dianne hesitated. “What is out there?”

Hester’s mouth pursed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

They stared at each other, locked in stalemate, until Dianne made again to stand and head for the door. She would have made it, too, if Hester hadn’t stood up and dropped her glass entirely in favour of grabbing Dianne by the wrist. Her wine splashed out in a wide arc as it fell, soaking bright and red into the tablecloth as they stood together, suddenly stilled by shock and indecision.

Dianne was the one to break it as she wrenched her arm free - not that there was anywhere to go with Hester now before her and the table at her back. “If you won’t explain, I shall find out for myself,” she said.

“Fine!” Hester cried, her voice momentarily deepening, turning rough and accented. Dianne stared as she continued, “if you’re so very sure that you want to know.”

Hester unbuttoned her cuff as she spoke, her fingers fumbling with the buttons until finally they were free and her sleeve was rolling up, up- revealing her milky skin and the hidden lines of her arm, suddenly on display. Dianne recoiled from what was revealed, quickly moving to turn her head away, but Hester grabbed her by the chin and forced her back.

“Look,” she said through gritted teeth.

Her grip was painfully tight on Dianne’s jaw, and when Dianne did look again she couldn’t stop herself from gasping in sympathy. A circle of tiny, perfect punctures, bisected by long and thin deep slashes, sat daintily just below the curve of Hester’s elbow, surrounded by swollen, angry-looking red skin. It didn’t look fresh, but it didn’t look like it was healing easily, either.

Hester’s voice was quiet and furious. “You wanted to know, so now you’ll look. She caught me by surprise and tried to drink from me, the little fool. That was not the Sara you remember! You must let her go, let her join the others and be gone from this place.”

A chill swept through Dianne from head to toe. “The others?”

Hester released her and turned away, her hand going to her mouth. “I suppose Miranda must have turned her,” she said distantly.

“Turned? What do you mean-“

“Yes, turned,” Hester interrupted, her voice rising in pitch as she repeated the word over and over. Then she stopped, sighed, and pressed her fist against her forehead. “This country, by God. Sometimes I could swear that everybody who crosses the seas loses all their sense on the journey.”

Dianne watched, dumbfounded, as Hester made a throaty noise of frustration and began to roll her sleeve back down. “You cannot mean-“

Hester starred Dianne down until she stuttered to a stop. “If you don’t believe me, go walk outside alone,” she said coldly. After a moment she chuckled, though there was no amusement in it. “No? Of course, you won’t do that. You’re far too intelligent. It’s why I took you on.”

Exhaling heavily, she swept her loosened hair back from her face and propped one hand on her hip.

Raising her eyebrows, she asked, “well? _Are_ you going to walk outside?”

Anger warred briefly inside Dianne with disbelief and outraged laughter. Despite the desire to be wrong - no, to prove _Hester_ wrong - she raised her chin and clenched her teeth. “No,” she admitted.

“Good-“

“Not if you explain,” Dianne finished quickly.

Hester blinked at her for a moment before smiling, just the one corner of her mouth turning upinto something smug and wry. “You are interesting,” she eventually replied. “Not tonight.”

“When?” Dianne asked, pressing forward a few steps when Hester picked up her wine glass and refilled it before she made for the door.

Hester took a long drink of her wine before she answered. Her tongue flicked across her lips, red with wine, and she seemed to be pondering her answer at great length. Or perhaps she was simply taking the opportunity to watch Dianne, Dianne couldn’t be sure.

“Not tonight,” she repeated as her eyes traced down Dianne’s body, past her heaving chest and then back up to her face. She held up a finger for silence when Dianne went to protest. “But soon.”

With only that promise given, she was gone. Leaving Dianne in her wake, torn between following or turning to the windows to begin her new habit of checking the lawns once more.

*

Sheer exhaustion pulled Dianne under that night, lulled by the click-clicking of Hester’s heels. Once she though that she had awoken to the distant sound of a scream, or perhaps it was merely a shriek or even a laugh. It was hard to be sure when her dreams were full of strange things, so very strange, and Hester always in them and no less strange herself.

Somehow, it was Hester’s voice and the cool touch of a hand on Dianne’s brow that soothed her when she tossed, or possibly she had dreamed that too-

Whatever it was that had helped her sleep, when she awoke to the first light of dawn she felt more refreshed than she’d expected. That did not help her in her search for Hester, however. In such a big house, with all of the staff and pupils gone and none left of the servants except the gardener, there was nobody to ask and endless rooms to check.

Slowly, Dianne made her way floor by floor until she ended up outside, frustrated and oddly afraid. She couldn’t explain it, when she knew the town was just down the road, but it felt like Hester was the only other person left alive in the world.

So it was a relief when she eventually found Hester in the garden, tending the flowers in a fine dress of white more befitting the students than their headmistress, tied at the waist with a thick green ribbon sash. Dianne could hear her humming, even from a distance, as she dug her fingers into the dirt and stained her hem with mud.

“I-,” Dianne started to say nervously. But the words caught in her throat as Hester’s humming grew louder.

As she watched incredulously, Hester waved a hand over a freshly turned patch of earth and a small green shoot begin to wind and grow its way towards the sunlight, or perhaps toward her voice.

Dianne tried to speak again, but words failed her and finally she gave up and collapsed to the ground beside Hester, heedless of her petticoats, and gave herself over to watching.

Her voice was like a lark as it dipped and soared, and bit by bit the small shoot began to grow leaves, and then more stems and branches, until a small, delicate looking bush swayed beneath Hester’s hand. “You have questions,” Hester said as she sighed happily and sat back.

Dianne was transfixed as she watched Hester tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear, leaving a streak of mud along her cheek. She seemed somehow more angled and dangerous than usual and, despite the brightness of the morning sunlight, Dianne found herself remembering the strangely exaggerated sight of Hester’s face lit only by flame and moonlight in the window.

“Dianne? Your questions, Dianne. I won’t wait forever.”

“You’re not like them,” Dianne answered automatically, the words slipping out before she had thought about them.

“Oh, aren’t I?” Hester’s smile was sharp as she turned back to her little plant. She caressed it, and it curled around her fingers, reaching for her as its flower buds began to grow and unfurl. She plucked one just as it began to open, and it went still between her fingers as the others continued eagerly unfurling and spilling themselves into her hand. “We’re made of something crueler and older than you can imagine.”

“No, you are not like them,” Dianne said with determination, forcing more confidence into her words than she truly possessed.

Hester’s laughter was low, and when the words came they were spoken in an altogether different manner than Dianne was used to, the same strange, fleeting accent from the night before. “That’s what he always said I was. Different. Special. But that wasn’t true, was it? I was always meant to be a snack, once he had enough money for the journey. Someone to see him safely through to the other side.”

She trailed off for a long time, seemingly lost in thought.

“Sometimes I wonder who he found to take my place. Of course he must have found someone in the end. It would be just like my Arthur to try and turn my own girls against me,” Hester eventually finished.

“Arthur?” Dianne started to ask, then cut herself short and shook her head. She tried again, desperate not to be distracted this time. “Your voice-“

Hester whipped her head around, her eyes glinting strangely in the sunlight. “Is none of your concern.”

Dianne pulled back. “But you’re nothing like… like-“

Hester chuckled lowly as she plucked a perfect cluster of blue flowers, now in full bloom, and tucked them behind Dianne’s ear, all calm once more. “I should like to think I have more self-control than a bunch of schoolgirls,” Hester said. Dianne shook her head in denial but the impossible flowers shook with her, and she knew that their softness against her temple made a liar of her. “There was a fight before we was meant to board the boat. Sara’s teeth aren’t the first to taste this flesh.”

Dianne knew she was staring again, her lips parted in horror and wonder, but Hester waited her out; she returned to digging and humming once more while Dianne struggled with herself. Eventually Dianne uncovered the next question she most wanted answered, even as she hated herself for the words.

“Can you make them leave?”

Sitting back again from the flowerbed, Hester sighed. “The bite’s only half of it, you understand? You have to drain a person dry to find your full strength and I never did that. I ain’t a match for them like this, though they don’t seem to know that yet. I ain’t usually a proper match for Arthur on ‘is own either, though he’s older and weaker than me.”

Mulling that over for a moment, Dianne asked, “but if you drink-“

“Drain. It’s not the sort of thing you can hide easy, not in a small place like this,” Hester said wryly, turning one raised eyebrow on a blushing Dianne.

Trying in vain to pretend that her secret, that she had run to whisper to others about the very woman she confided in now, was not known, Dianne tried again. “But if you could?” she asked.

Pushing herself to her feet, Hester wiped her hands on her skirt with little heed for stains. “You will have to leave, eventually,” was all she said in reply. “Me as well, most likely.”

“But what about the other girls, or if I do not wish to?” Dianne asked long after she was alone, staring at Hester’s flowers as they bobbed and bloomed and grew taller, swaying in the breeze.

*

That night, shrieking and chilling laughter echoed across on the grounds and drove her to hide in the safety and comfort of her bed as soon as the sun had set. Dianne dressed in her nightgown swiftly but left her bedroom door wide open so that when the click-clicking began again, the light from Hester’s candle would spill across her in her bed.

As soon as she saw the glow and heard the footsteps she sat up, trying to rub the tiredness from her eyes and gather her thoughts.

“Outside- The girls, I-,” Dianne tried to explain as Hester stopped in the doorway and stared at her in silence. “I don’t want to be alone,” Dianne eventually admitted.

The silence stretched for so long that Dianne started to wonder if it would ever break, but somehow could not bring herself to ask again. Then Hester turned to leave without saying a word and Dianne shivered, hugging her own body and feeling colder than ever.

Hester paused and looked back at her. Staring into her eyes, made dark in the flickering of the candle, was like sinking into a fathomless night. Still only half awake, Dianne wondering if she could get lost in them - perhaps even wander through them, to some place new and strange that only Hester had ever seen.

Until Hester smiled and tilted her head, and the moment shattered between them. She continued out into the hall, taking the light with her - and, slipping from her bed in bare feet, Dianne took her unspoken invitation and followed.

*

Dianne was humming happily to herself as she left the shops, tucking her purchases safely away for the bumpy ride back to the college, when a faintly familiar voice called out to her.

“Mr. Cosgrove,” she replied flatly as she turned to greet him, a sinking sensation in her stomach.

His hat was in his hands and he looked sheepish as he asked after Sara, and made his apologies for his absence.

“I was about to head back myself, if you would like to join me?” she asked, interrupting his monologue of excuses.

Looking startled only for a moment, he smiled brightly and accepted. “How very fortuitous that I found you here,” he said as she took his arm and pointed the way to the college carriage and the gardener, waiting in the front seat for her to return.

Something twinged in her heart as he chattered all the way home. But the school wasn’t safe for the girls to return to. Some things simply had to be done.

“I will take you to the Headmistress and then I shall fetch Sara for you,” Dianne said quickly when Mr. Cosgrove peered around at the empty grounds. Smiling graciously, she led the way indoors to Hester’s study, opening the door wide with a brief curtsey. “If you will, Monsieur?”

“Of course, of course,” he said awkwardly as he entered, still wringing his hat between his hands.

The look on Hester’s face was priceless, blank in a way that Dianne would once have misconstrued entirely. “What is this?” she hissed as soon as Dianne - hurrying her pace to get ahead of Mr. Cosgrove - reached her.

“I think it may be time for a drink,” Dianne simply breathed in her ear.

Carefully she reached for Hester’s hand, squeezing it once hard and hidden behind the volume of their skirts. Then she retreated just as quickly, carefully ignoring Hester’s flashing eyes and grasping fingers.

“I will leave you in Madame Appleyard’s capable hands,” she said with one last dip of her head as she backed towards the door.

The last thing she saw before she closed it behind her was Hester, watching her leave instead of looking to Mr. Cosgrove. Her face was still inscrutable other than the beginnings of a smirk lurking at the corners. But her eyes-

Her eyes promised many things, both delicious and terrifying, to come.


End file.
